Step 5: Stay in Touch

Sustaining community engagement is as important as building relationships. It is important to stay in touch—not only to update your partners on your activities but also to stay updated on staff turnover and transitions in partner organizations. It is important to communicate with your contacts on a regular basis and build in a mechanism to maintain updated contact information. You might find it helpful at this stage to provide regular brief updates on the progress of your work through e-mail, mail, or telephone calls. Later, as resources allow, you might want to develop a newsletter (in print or electronic formats) to keep people in your network connected, informed, and responsive. Build opportunities into your communication and outreach activities for feedback from your partner organizations.

Regularly scheduled phone calls, newsletters, fliers around the community, and meetings can help you maintain and update your COIN network.